


Let Me Drive (My Bus) Into Your Heart

by Shiropropaganda



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, M/M, bus drive au, idek man don't judge me, maybe a higher rating in part two
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 03:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16188692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiropropaganda/pseuds/Shiropropaganda
Summary: Shiro's a bus driver who's been reassigned to a boring route.One of the regulars makes it much more interesting.





	Let Me Drive (My Bus) Into Your Heart

It’s a Friday morning when Iverson slides a file across his desk.

Shiro eyes it with a grim smile.

“Reassigning me?” 

Iverson has the good grace to look sheepish, but he flips the file open anyway.

“Sanda thinks you should have a less congested route… for the time being.”

Shiro drums the fingers of his prosthetic against the wood of the table. It’s a new model, an upgrade that came from months of driving the late shift and a second job, but he understands the company’s hesitation. Despite the fact that he’d passed his post-op physical and driving test… maybe it would be better to take an easier workload and not risk lives on his reflexes until he’s had enough practice.

The new route is simple, it’s a loop that starts at the edge of town and heads in towards campus before circling back, the route services a lot of quiet streets where there are only one or two buses available. The shift is short too, just a six to six with a long break in the middle that makes Shiro feel bad for other drivers who start earlier or end later. He’ll drive anywhere from six to eight hours a day, with weekends off. The depot he’ll be reporting to is close enough to Hunk’s hole-in-the-wall place that Shiro can drop in on his breaks, and far enough out that he’ll be able to dust off his motorcycle.

He sighs and takes the file, shooting Iverson a wry grin. He’s already wondering how long he’ll have to stick to this schedule before they’ll approve him for overtime.

“Don’t look at me,” the old man says, “you never take a vacation, we needed you to get some rest somehow.”

 

It’s pouring rain on the day Shiro begins his new route. He’d driven it a few times on his bike to get familiar-- it’s honestly a beautiful stretch, the origin point is just out of town and he gets to see the city rise as he approaches, but the visibility today is dismal and all the practice runs in the world wouldn’t have soothed his nerves as he sits behind the wheel.

The early morning circles go as smoothly as possible, but the roads fill up for the morning rush and Shiro finds himself leaning over the wheel to squint through rain in order to tell what’s a car and what’s a red traffic light.

It would be the rain that Shiro credits for what happens around 9.

 

He’s twenty minutes from campus, near some of the old apartments. He  _ thinks _ he sees something dark hurtling towards the bus, but he can’t be positive so he hits the breaks. Seconds later there’s a rap on the door and he swings it open, letting a soaked man stumble onto the bus.

“Sorry,” the man pants, scanning his card, “My umbrella got… it’s just really… thanks for stopping.”

Shiro means to just give the guy a nod and carry on, but then the new-comer pulls down his hood and pins Shiro with a beautiful wide-eyed expression of gratitude.

He can feel his cheeks flush in response. The man gives him a small smile, and Shiro finds himself leaning forward to hear what he says next and--

“Um, are you going to close the door?”

The color leaves his face as he realizes the bus door is still open, rain all but soaking the steps and he pulls the lever to swing the door closed and presses the gas. The man takes the seat directly behind him and Shiro can feel eyes on him the entire ride.

He eyes the man in his mirror when he stands at the door for the university stop. He has a faint scar across his cheek, and a stubborn twist to his mouth that Shiro kind of likes.

“Uh, sir?” A woman speaks up, and right, Shiro should open the door to let the passengers off.

He looks up, right before he steps off, back into the rain, and gives Shiro another small smile that keeps him warm through the rest of his route.

By the end of the week, Shiro is used to the other man’s presence enough to be remember to operate the bus doors appropriately and not accidentally tap the breaks every time he meets dark eyes in his mirror.

 

There is no reason for him to be as intrigued by a passenger, but he is and Shiro assures himself that he is merely managing the stress of a new route by fixating on something familiar, something he sees every day.

Because he does.

He sees this man  _ everyday _ , sometimes twice a day. He boards Shiro’s bus every weekday morning around 9, and then some afternoons. The time varies in the afternoon, but every time the man swipes his card, he gives Shiro a small smile and a  _ Thanks,  _ before taking a seat. A month in, the  _ Thanks _ upgraded to a soft  _ Good morning,  _ and Shiro’s face had felt warm for hours after. 

 

It’s a Wednesday when Shiro finds a wallet lodged between a seat and the wall of the bus during his lunch break at the depot.

He doesn’t  _ need _ to flip it open to check who the owner is. He already knows who sat in that seat, but he does it anyway, just to read the name on the campus ID.

_ Kogane, Keith _

_ Faculty _

Luckily, it was one of the afternoons where Keith took Shiro’s route home.

Unluckily, the bus was packed.

Shiro held out the wallet the moment the man stepped on, and his eyes lit up in a way that was enough to lift Shiro’s mood for the next few days.

“Thank you!” the younger man said, “I--”

But he was cut off by an older man behind him, shoving him out of the way to scan in and squeeze towards the back of the bus. A swarm of passengers followed and Shiro sighed, swinging the door closed.

At the next red light there was a soft tap on the glass of the partition separating him from the passengers, and he was pleased when his eyes met Keith’s.

“As I was saying,” he said with a slight frown, “thank you, so much. I really appreciate it.”

Shiro felt his face heat and shrugged.

“Part of the job?” he said intending to sound unaffected, but it came out like a question and he grimaced internally.

The other man shot him another small grin.

“Let me repay you.”

There was a sharp sound of a horn, and Shiro startled, seeing the light had changed and putting the bus back into gear.

“Not necessary,” he mumbled, ears burning pink.

Keith lingered behind him until his stop.

“Bye, Takashi,” he said before making his way to the door.

Shiro breathed hard through his nose, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

_ How? _

It took him nearly an hour to remember that his name and credentials are posted on his dashboard.

 

The next morning, there’s no Keith.

And the morning after that.

Shiro tries not to hold the breaks for a few extra seconds and check his mirrors a hundred times, but he catches himself searching for the other man anyway.

 

The weekend is filled with blessed distraction-- and too much of Hunk’s sweet coconut bread, and suddenly it’s Monday morning and Shiro is blinking at a windswept Keith who seems to be desperately avoiding his eyes.

His gaze drops to the metal tumbler the other man is holding out. 

“I wanted to thank you, so…” Keith mumbles, “it’s just iced coffee.”

Shiro can feel his face start to flush and Keith is still waiting for him to take the tumbler, and he can practically feel the other passengers watching them and checking their watches impatiently.

“I appreciate it,” he says, slipping the cup into the holder.

Keith sits in the seat behind the door, right where he’s in Shiro’s line of sight, and he hopes that he doesn’t look too smitten while he drives.

The coffee is alright.

Keith’s small wave goodbye when he gets off the bus is better.

  
It becomes a routine.

When Keith is on Shiro’s morning route, he passes a tumbler full of coffee over the partition and Shiro returns the empty cup in the afternoon, or the next morning. He’s started washing the cups in Hunk’s kitchen before stuffing some snacks inside-- Keith never mentions this, but Shiro’s caught him eating mini muffins or dried meat or whatever Shiro’s been able to get from Hunk that he can make fit inside the tumbler.

They’ve started… chatting.

Keith is clearly unpracticed in small talk, but Shiro is an old pro. His patience is rewarded after a few tries, and then Keith starts telling him about his job at the university. He’s an archivist at the campus library, but spends most of his time doing research, a few times a month the head librarian lets him work from home. Shiro has to stop himself from imagining the other man with glasses and his hair swept back, but it’s a near thing. 

He tries to pretend that the days Keith isn’t on his route are the same as any other day, but he’s always been a terrible liar. 

 

Shiro is stressed out.

The bus is packed to capacity with students and office workers heading home or to the bus terminal at the edge of town for the holidays. He can’t really blame them, a rare winter storm is on the forecast-- though the weather has been clear and pleasant all day-- and no one wants to get stuck.

_ Stuck _ is a questionable term in Shiro’s opinion, but he grew up with snow and ice, so he doesn’t take the threat of five inches of powder very seriously. The ground isn’t frozen and the air doesn’t smell crisp or clean the way it did when he was young, so he thinks the whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

It’s Shiro’s last run, and the sun has already gone down for the day. He barely had a chance to give Keith a quick nod before he was swallowed up in the press of bodies on the way to the back of the bus. 

Shiro pulls into the depot two hours later and grabs for the broom to tidy up before he heads to clock out for the day. He spies a bag on the floor towards the back and frowns as he approaches. He frowns deeper when he sees Keith slumped down in the seat and fast asleep. 

This isn’t the first time someone’s ended up at the end of the line during one of Shiro’s shifts, but this  _ is _ the first time traffic has been such a nightmare that he thinks twice about calling a cab. He tries not to admit to himself he’s being a bit selfish because it’s  _ Keith _ , but--

“Takashi?”

Keith’s voice is thick with sleep and he’s blinking up at him with a warm smile. Shiro returns it without a second thought, and crouches down in the aisle. 

“Hey, you fell asleep. We’re at the depot at the edge of town.”

“Shit,” Keith breathes, sitting up and looking around. 

“Relax,” Shiro says with a fond chuckle-- god he’s so fucked, “I’m going to clean up the bus and I’ll take you home.”

Keith’s eyes are still hooded, as if he’s fighting to keep them open, and he relaxes in the seat. Shiro rushes through his sweeping and mopping and shakes the other man awake thirty minutes later.

“Sorry,” Keith says once he’s blinked himself awake and collected his bag, “it was a long day.”

Shiro doesn’t recall giving his hand permission to move, but he finds himself squeezing the other man’s shoulder. When his brain catches up with his limbs he feels mortified, but Keith gives him a small grin and leans into the touch.

Shiro clocks out as discreetly as he can, but Allura catches him with a quirk of her brow and a pointed glance out the window at where Keith is standing, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

“He fell asleep on my route,” Shiro explains, but why he’s explaining this to the dispatcher is unclear.

Her eyes all but sparkle as she says, “I’m sure he did.”

Shiro practically runs out the door.

“Are you hungry?” Shiro asks, because his entire body seems to have betrayed him, “I know a good place near here.”

Keith nods, and he hopes to every star in the universe that this isn’t a mistake.

 

Hunk, for all his good points, is a jerk.

A mild jerk, as all of his knowing looks and brow wiggles happen behind Keith’s back while they sit across from each other in the small restaurant.

Shiro cringes internally every time Hunk speaks to Keith, because his shit-eating grin grows wider as innuendo after innuendo flies over the younger man’s head. 

Hunk is in the middle of telling Keith he  _ hopes he enjoys a thick cut of meat _ when Shiro’s prosthetic grips his water glass so hard it breaks with a dull crunch.

Keith and Hunk both look at him with saucer-round eyes, but Hunk recovers with a smirk.

“So strong, Shiro,” he coos with a wink before heading back towards the kitchen to fetch him a new glass.

“Shiro?” Keith questions, eyes locked on his hand as he tries to pick the glass from the edges of the metal.

“It’s a nickname,” he says defeatedly, flexing his fingers.

“Would you prefer I… not call you Takashi?” Keith’s head tilts with the question, and Shiro can see Hunk frozen out of the corner of his eye eavesdropping.

“I don’t mind,” Shiro says quickly, willing his face to stop flushing, “you can call me anything you prefer.”

He can feel the glee rolling off of Hunk in waves.

Either Hunk picked up on Shiro’s murder stare, or he found his soul somewhere because he leaves them alone for the rest of the night.

It’s late when they leave Hunk’s place and head for Shiro’s bike. The cold is beginning to set in, but not enough for Shiro to worry. It  _ is _ enough for Keith though, and he wraps his arms around himself and sighs.

It’s… It’s not subtle when Shiro wraps his coat around him and helps him buckle his spare helmet, but Keith either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind and wraps his arms around Shiro’s waist as they head back into town.

 

Shiro is grateful he’s had months of practice driving around Keith, because concentrating on the road is hard enough with him at an arm's length. If he wouldn’t have become desensitized to that, there would be no way he would have been able to make the trip with Keith’s warm, solid body against his back.

Keith lingers after handing him his things and Shiro tries not to notice the blush on the other man’s cheekbones. It’s cold, it’s normal to get pink in the face when it’s cold. It in no way makes Keith look soft and endearing. It doesn’t-- Keith is looking at him and it takes him a full ten seconds to realize he’d asked him something.

“Sorry, what was that?” 

“Are you going to be driving over the holidays?” Keith directs the question to his shoes, but Shiro knows it’s for him.

“Yeah, I uh. I don’t have any family around here, so I picked up some extra shifts.”

They stand quietly for a moment, and Keith is bravely trying to stop his body from shivering. Shiro reaches out and squeezes his shoulder  _ again _ . 

“Go warm up,” he says, pulling his jacket on.

“Takashi,” Keith says suddenly, “thank you. I… this was fun.”

He turns tail into his building before Shiro’s brain has the opportunity to register it, and he spends the rest of the ride home wondering how long his jacket would smell like Keith.

 

When he gets home, he has messages in his group chat lighting up his screen.

There are are photos attached-- stealth-taken from the window of Hunk’s kitchen, and behind a potted plant, and from near the bathroom, and even one that looks like it was snuck from behind a menu--of he and Keith at dinner. Pidge and Allura both responded with hearts and caps-locked praise but Shiro knows the truth.

The truth is Hunk is a traitorous bastard.   
He saves the photos anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm as confused as you are.


End file.
